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purpleidea 7 hours ago [-]
In Canada, we wear steel-toe, steel-shank safety boots, and we're kind of required to keep them on. We surely give them a good clunk to get rid of mud or snow, particularly in the winter, and we try to wipe our feet as much as possible when it's not a dire emergency, but you called 911, so... your floor is going to get dirty. Might already have blood on it anyways.
embedding-shape 5 hours ago [-]
Same, even in countries I live/lived where not taking off shoes indoors is borderline a social crime, paramedics, emergency services and even craftspeople/tradespeople would typically not take off their shoes when entering your home.
Personally I got so tired of it we got those "one-use blue shoe covers" that we tell them to wear before going in, but of course I don't think either of us would think about that if we called for emergency services.
swiftcoder 9 hours ago [-]
It is mind blowing to me that the shoes-off-inside rule is so deeply entrenched that emergency responders remove their shoes at the front door
arjie 8 hours ago [-]
When I was a child in India, I was taught (not by my parents, by the societal milieu I suppose) to not let the (soles of?) my feet touch a book or a bag that contains books of knowledge. In any case, the behavior is a strongly trained habit so I feel compelled to do it. I do not choose or or not choose to do it. It is close to an automatic behavior, something like wrinkling one’s nose at a bad smell or so on.
I was not brought up in a religious household and have never been a follower of any known religion. And I do not have any belief tied to this behavior. It is an oddity of my being that I accept.
Isn’t it interesting how one can be conditioned so? I sometimes wonder if alcoholics or drug addicts feel this way.
Perhaps the Japanese feel this way about their cultural quirk in the way I feel about mine.
fakedang 8 hours ago [-]
Most (literate, educated) Indians have been trained the same, and it has very little to do with religion. When you do accidentally step on a book though, each religion has their own format - Hindus touch the book then touch their head then chest in penance, Muslims lightly kiss the book or touch the book/bag and kiss their hand, Christians touch the book and cross themselves.
This is something I've noticed is uniquely culturally Indian, and transcends all religions. Which is beautiful.
I was once whacked in the head by a teacher for throwing a book onto the shelf, and rightly so.
tomasGiden 5 hours ago [-]
I also try to teach my children to be careful with books but beating a child surely cannot be the the right way. If we adults strike children for them treating possessions badly, are we then not saying that they are less worthy of good treatment than possessions? That would be deeply humiliating to me.
And I highly doubt that, in general, 'whacking' children will make them grow up kinder more compassionate adults.
arjie 8 hours ago [-]
Perhaps it is regional. Where I grew up the error-repair gesture varied certainly (forehead, lips, etc.) but I went to Catholic school for a while and I do not recall the distinction being neatly by religion but my memory isn’t that sharp of that period of my childhood.
Considering the rationale offered by Hindus, I’d be inclined to believe it is a Hindu custom adopted by everyone else by virtue of relative numbers. Sort of like how Christmas is secular in the US, Diwali in India, and perhaps weaker something like Eid in Jordan.
So I agree, very little to do with religion today, but perhaps not so always. Something like Halloween perhaps.
djeastm 6 hours ago [-]
The behavior sounds like superstition. Is there a belief that something bad will happen if the ritual is not performed?
vikramkr 4 hours ago [-]
Can't speak for op for but me no - it was just ingrained as something disrespectful to do to books. Sometimes you've got a taboo like eating with your left hand that has a pretty clear reason for coming into existence (you use your left hand to clean up in the bathroom and before hand soap in the era of everyone dying from cholera might as well keep those functions as physically separated as possible) but this is more just something you would be disrespectful to do
Der_Einzige 23 minutes ago [-]
All of this crap including taking your shoes off indoors is predicated on superstitions that are simply not politically correct to call out.
cromka 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, I think that it's a good example where politeness and respect ingrained in society can be taken a step too far. I don't want my rescuers waste 30-45s on taking shoes off and after I had a stroke and minutes decide whether or not I ended up with a permanent brain damage...
makeitdouble 6 hours ago [-]
TBF getting shoes on and off is literally 2s.
There's photos in the article, those aren't dress shoes with laces to be done and undone, they're fit for the purpose.
Also in cases where it's really dire they'll just step in with shoes on, it's just extremely rare and it might actually be another team altogether, operating under a different protocol.
embedding-shape 5 hours ago [-]
> TBF getting shoes on and off is literally 2s.
What about when you're three people while carrying a person? According to the article, it can delay them by ~30 seconds and risk dislodging the oxygen mask, the linked video also demonstrates the difference: https://www.instagram.com/p/DbqGfGfox3f/
Might seem like a small difference, but add in a stressful situation with a person almost dying, maybe being in pain, and the emergency workers trying to keep calm while also suddenly not finding their shoes in the position they purposefully left them, and suddenly the difference might be much large and also impactful.
makeitdouble 3 hours ago [-]
I'd look at it from the lens of the situation near the door changing in unexpected ways.
Like turning the thumblock, moving the bench, shoving other people's shoes in the way etc. There is a myriad of things the patient's family can do that result in 30s delays. Sure removing one specific potential cause could have value, but it might not be worth it considering the downsides (someone will have to deal with the mess, sometimes the lone elderly who's already in pain but not 30s from death either)
I think too many people are focusing on the "emergency" part, when most of the interventions aren't about shoving off every second. Other commentators picked up on the ambulances rolling into intersections at a snail's pace while blasting their sirens full volume, because they care a lot more about secundary harm than reaching the hospital 10s earlier.
embedding-shape 2 hours ago [-]
> (someone will have to deal with the mess, sometimes the lone elderly who's already in pain but not 30s from death either)
What mess? They're taking off their shoes regardless, and there is no additional mess being created by the resident not reorganizing the shoes of the paramedics.
There is no downsides here, just stop moving stuff around, pretty basic and no cost at all for stop doing so.
hulitu 2 hours ago [-]
> TBF getting shoes on and off is literally 2s.
I bet you don't have children.
2s might be too late in an emergency.
tdeck 4 hours ago [-]
People in Japan not only take their shoes off at home, but also in many other places as well. Most elementary schools and many doctors offices, eye doctors, etc.. have you take your shoes off, although it varies from place to place. Some restaurants require you to take your shoes off. I once visited a radio station and they took their shoes off there too for some reason (no, I don't believe it was ESD related).
So people are already doing this multiple times a day at their own homes and form a habit that often doesn't require much thought to follow.
Aerroon 59 minutes ago [-]
>I once visited a radio station and they took their shoes off there too for some reason (no, I don't believe it was ESD related).
Isn't it reasonable/normal to take shoes off at work and put on indoor does like sandals or similar ("work shoes")? Obviously it depends on the job, but it seems reasonable to me at a radio station. And if the regular employees are wearing indoor shoes, then it might become normal for outdoor shoes to not be typically worn inside.
setopt 2 hours ago [-]
Sounds wonderful. I remove my shoes in the office as well, since not doing so has led to health issues in the past, but it’s not so hygienic when everyone from colleagues to cleaning staff visit your office with their shoes on.
(Where I live, this is the norm at home, but not at office or public places.)
makeitdouble 6 hours ago [-]
These people will handle emergencies, but at a notch or two below fully equiped firefighters breaking the door and ready to deal with everything falling apart.
For instance for an elderly couple living together but both being pretty weak, if one's oxygen level was falling they probably couldn't get to the hospital for a full checkup by themselves. They'll call for help, these people will come, fit the patient with anything needed to safely make the trip, and move them out of the appartment to the nearest hospital.
There will be no need to trash the floor in precipitation, and they might spend some time in the appartement to properly access the situation and make it safe. They'll still want to be able to evacuate the person quickly if/when needed, but there will be a lot more to consider as well.
odiroot 4 hours ago [-]
I always wondered what happens if police forcibly enter someone's flat in these places. Do they ram the doors and then politely take off their shoes before entering?
I see a comedy potential.
bamboozled 1 hours ago [-]
I guess Japanese could say the same thing in reverse ?
shdon 13 hours ago [-]
In Dutch culture it is far more common to keep shoes on literally everywhere, so perhaps I'm biased, but I would think that in an emergency where every second counts, these people can be forgiven for not adhering to the strictest etiquette?
I'm not surprised the person last mentioned in the article, who suggests exactly that, got 800 likes on their comment. I am surprised that it even needed to be said.
Now I'm suddenly wondering (probably stupidly) whether firefighters also take their shoes off when entering a burning building.
socalgal2 6 hours ago [-]
Obviously, in an emergency, yea, keep them on. That said,
> In Dutch culture it is far more common to keep shoes on literally everywhere
It is in many cultures, including my own family's, but having gotten used to taking them off from living in Japan, I find it extremely strange taking them off is not more common.
It feel similar to doctors refusing to wash their hands during surgery, though I get I'm not doing surgery.
I never thought about it growing up but once I got used to it I can believe I used to walk across my house carpet in shoes that had dog shit, grease, and other grim in them, and then later lie on my floor and watch TV or whatever. I don't get why people don't see that and get grossed out more.
Sure, if they were covered in mud or feces then I'd take then off but for small amounts I wouldn't notice. Why that doesn't matter to more people seems more strange to me than the status quo.
hbcdbff 5 hours ago [-]
I also take my shoes and off and find it gross when people don’t.
That said, I don’t think it’s really rational. Our houses are full of bacteria and dirt one way or another anyway. It’s impossible to avoid that without having some kind of airlock equipped with a shower in your porch.
numpad0 36 minutes ago [-]
I think it has or had practical reasons. It rains a lot in Japan, and its prime occupation used to be flooded field rice farming. So it is/was normal for shoes coming home to be in a somewhat gross state.
Old farmer style houses in Japan have an entrance area behind the main sliding doors in bare soil[1], and a wooden platform at waist height between it to hallways. The platform can be sat on to take off shoes or to drop off bags of produces, and then hallways and tatami matted areas are further raised an inch or two - the walking floor level of houses are therefore give or take a whole feet off the ground. These together create multiple mental boundaries for dirtiness.
Modern houses have it miniaturized into just a cinder-block high gap or sometimes just industrial colored tiles before a bump. But IMO it's still nice being able to leave wet shoes and umbrellas there.
1: 土間 or doma, meaning soil-space. Oddly this transliteration coincides with "home" in Russian(and of course rhymes with Latin domus).
embedding-shape 5 hours ago [-]
> That said, I don’t think it’s really rational. Our houses are full of bacteria and dirt one way or another anyway.
True, but I don't know about you, but we don't have literal rocks, sediment, dirt pee, or literal poop on our floors in our home, anywhere. But shoes do occasionally step on stuff like that no matter how small, and neither of those things I want inside of my house on the floor.
But you're right that there still is bacteria or dirt all over the place, no doubt. But still, I don't step on something slightly soft with my socks in the living room and then inspect my foot to find poop stuck to it, and I think I'm gonna continue to prefer this way.
ericpauley 4 hours ago [-]
> rocks, sediment, dirt pee, or literal poop
This is basically what dust is. It’s everywhere.
throw0101a 3 hours ago [-]
>> rocks, sediment, dirt pee, or literal poop
> This is basically what dust is. It’s everywhere.
What?
> Dust in homes is composed of about 20–50% dead skin cells.[2] The rest, and in offices and other built environments, is composed of small amounts of plant pollen, human hairs, animal fur, textile fibers, paper fibers, minerals from outdoor soil, burnt meteorite particles, and many other materials which may be found in the local environment.[3]
Further: dust is floating in the air and can be removed with decent (MERV ≥11) air filters in your HVAC system. Stuff on the bottom of your shoe makes contact with your floor and stick around until you wash it (and for much longer in the fibre of carpet or rugs).
embedding-shape 4 hours ago [-]
Where do you live, where dust and pee/poop is the same? I'm fine with having small amount of the former inside, it's unavoidable, but the second is avoidable by removing your shoes.
wodenokoto 12 hours ago [-]
I think we can roughly split paramedic visits into “patient needs to get out ASAP” and patient can’t get out alone or with help of friends and family”, so I would hope they keep their shoes on for the first type.
But ambulances in with full sirens begging over their speaker-system to have pedestrians at Shibuya crossing let the vehicle through, is probably the worst thing about Japan.
As for your second question, I’m reminded of Bob Mortimer in Would I lie To You: “… then the fire brigade came and ruined the whole house” - “Bob, surely the fire was ruining the house” - “No, water damage”. Maybe if those darn firefighters had taken their boots off, there had been a bit more left of Bobs childhood home.
bauruine 7 hours ago [-]
>No, water damage
That's what we learned in fire fighting training. Everything that doesn't get destroyed by the fire and smoke will get destroyed by the water you use to put the fire out. A house on fire is lost. You just save people and animals and then you do whatever you need to protect the neighbouring structures.
tdeck 4 hours ago [-]
> But ambulances in with full sirens begging over their speaker-system to have pedestrians at Shibuya crossing let the vehicle through, is probably the worst thing about Japan.
Unfortunately ambulances in Japan blare their sirens any time they are transporting a patient, and because they are free some people use them like taxis. So you may see an ambulance at 2AM driving down a residential street blaring their siren at full volume, going 5 mph while the medics call around to various hospitals to see who will take their patient with an upset stomach.
Once I passed a moving ambulance with the siren on...while slowly riding my bike down an otherwise empty road.
The result is that Japanese people seem to tune out the siren. If the driver isn't also on the loudspeaker telling them insistently to move aside, they assume it's not a "real" emergency.
throwaway270925 9 hours ago [-]
> “No, water damage”
Bob should have used some of his Fuji 9, that fixes everything!
KennyBlanken 8 hours ago [-]
I've known enough people who worked in EMS to know that it's very common for there to be little alignment between 1a)what the dispatcher is told 1b)what comes from dispatcher 2)what they see when they walk in the door and 3)what the person actually needs.
SapporoChris 10 hours ago [-]
I suspect that there are several levels of severity in an emergency and that when appropriate the responders forego removal of shoes. It's a low depth article, they didn't go into details.
cannonpr 12 hours ago [-]
So, I can’t honestly personally understand taking your shoes off in an emergency, however I am sure they have gotten very efficient at it.. I can say that if they didn’t it would cause damage to the home, many Japanese homes, especially traditional but also in general just aren’t built to take shoes. Tatami mats, and even hinoki floors despite being “hard” for a softwood, is still a softwood, so some level of genuine damage would occur. Again of-course versus the emergency in saving a human life, I’m not quite sure I can understand it.
Cthulhu_ 6 hours ago [-]
Also in the Netherlands, doctors / nurses in my local hospital wear things like crocs and other slip-in type shoes - don't think paramedics do, just something I noticed.
f33d5173 12 hours ago [-]
Most shoes have rubber soles, to do damage to the floor it would have to be softer than rubber.
Gigachad 12 hours ago [-]
You can quite easily have small rocks wedged in the tread of your shoes which will scratch floors.
tdeck 4 hours ago [-]
Tatami is very common in Japanese houses and I was told you're not even really supposed to wear hard-soled slippers on it.
I’m not saying the shoes would damage the floor but that’s not really true. Both sides of the contact get some wear, even if one of them is softer.
xxs 8 hours ago [-]
more like(ly) polyurethane, not rubber. however any sand would scratch wooden floors
12 hours ago [-]
Georgelemental 12 hours ago [-]
Here in America, EMS personnel generally wear tall, reinforced boots; they are considered protective/safety equipment. We would never take them off just to enter a home
JackMorgan 3 hours ago [-]
As firefighters we enter homes in our full turnout gear with fire boots, even for simple calls like automatic fire alarms. The reason being 1/100 automatic alarms are real fires, so we don't want to be caught with our pants down.
Throughout my fire and EMS training I was taught to anticipate possible violence from the residents. I personally know folks who have entered buildings and been shot at or found booby traps. One guy I know responded to an arson house fire where the resident had cut out holes in the floor under every window and door and covered the holes with rugs, Home Alone style.
The US has a serious drug and mental health crisis. First responders often have to deal with people who probably would be in state care if we didn't spend all our tax money on bombs and tax cuts for the wealthy. Or at least they would have caretakers who visit and help them take medications and escalate when they start setting up booby traps to defend against the voices.
eqvinox 12 hours ago [-]
Probably the same in most Western countries. It's self reinforcing though; if you were expecting to take them off you'd never pick those shoes by default, rather leave them in the back of the car (which presumably/hopefully is what they do in Japan, in case they *do* need them? idk…)
agarwaen163 12 hours ago [-]
if you do need them you're not going to have time to go get them as an Emergency Responder. I think the pragmatic course then is to disregard etiquette and tradition for safety and practicality in a general sense.
eqvinox 12 hours ago [-]
Everyone except the driver has ample time to swap boots during the drive to the location. (In cases where not, I'd also default to robust safety boots.)
Depending on the boots, you might not want to wear them while "idle"¹ in any case, though that's mostly a non-concern with modern safety shoes.
¹ mandatory note: most emergency responders have tons of work while "idle", I just mean "not actively responding"
Georgelemental 11 hours ago [-]
You don't always know what the location is like though. You are called to an apartment: maybe it is spotlessly clean, maybe the floor is littered with used needles
analog31 9 hours ago [-]
A friend of mine who was a paramedic told me that getting people out of a building is actually heavy, dangerous work. "They always die on the crapper, up 3 flights of stairs."
Also, in my town, the firefighters are also paramedics. The first people who showed up in my Moment of Need came in a fire truck. The ambulance came a couple minutes later.
Georgelemental 8 hours ago [-]
For particularly heavy patients, on occasion the only way is to knock down a wall.
ErroneousBosh 7 hours ago [-]
I think I've mentioned it before here but at a hospital near me a few years ago they got a bariatric patient in who was so large they couldn't weigh her. I suggested that since they were near a VOSA inspection site they could have just had the whole ambulance on the weighbridge, but apparently when someone is around 350kg you kind of don't need that degree of accuracy.
The hospital facilities team removed the front doors and the unboltable parts of the frame, and then gassed off the handrails and wheelchair ramp fittings to give access.
The ambulance arrived followed by a fire brigade Landrover with four guys in and a rescue pump with another five. It took all of them to lift the patient into the hospital on a canvas sling.
left-struck 9 hours ago [-]
That would be very unlikely in Japan, maybe it would happen a handful of times in your career and you could indeed put on safer boots.
Anyway I’m not against paramedics wearing boots in my apartment, in an emergency very few people would care about that even in Japan.
Georgelemental 8 hours ago [-]
How certain are you that it is so rare? EMS are disproportionately called to the poorest and most miserable.
21asdffdsa12 7 hours ago [-]
It also seems quite dangerous to take them off- depending on the home. Some hoarders, drug addicted situations have needles, glass shards and razor blades in the debris on the floor. How do they handle hoarders in japan?
Faaak 7 hours ago [-]
Obviously, it depends on the context once the front door opens to you
21asdffdsa12 3 hours ago [-]
But - the context changes from room to room? Clean shared flat- messy druggy room with collapsed overdose person in it? This.. this whole situation makes no sense.. Have helper boots with a "condom-wrapper" if you are afraid of cleanliness - but keep the boots on at all times.
ldx1024 40 minutes ago [-]
Would it be against Japanese etiquette to simply write "Please Don't Reposition" on these work shoes? Seems like that would reduce the number of times this happens.
> Another user attracted more than 800 likes for suggesting that strict etiquette could perhaps be forsaken at such times: “It’s an emergency. I would just tell them: ‘Please step inside with your shoes on!’”
This seems like the best policy in an emergency where 30 seconds actually matters. And I actually like the East Asian custom of taking one's shoes off before entering a house and adopt it myself.
Where I grew up (suburbs in the Midwest in the US) it was common and expected all around that you'd leave your shoes just inside the door and walk around in your socks, at least for family/friends/guests. Can't remember about service workers.
kstrauser 8 hours ago [-]
Where I grew up (suburbs in the Midwest in the US) no one took their shoes off, ever, until it was bedtime. I cannot remember a single time taking my shoes of at a friend's house, or when visiting somewhere with my parents, or going off to see family. I guess the only exception would be if the shoes were exceedingly dirty, like you'd just stepped in mud or such.
Similarly in the military. We got un-booted at bedtime, and put them back on when we got up the next morning. Even in the barracks, including the nice ones that were reasonably nice apartment buildings, I never took off my shoes to walk around my room or when visiting someone else's (and vice versa; no one took off their shoes to visit me).
The first time I bumped into that rule was when I met my wife, who'd moved to the area from New York. I was quite confused when she asked me to take my shoes off at the door, and more than a little anxious. Sure hope I'm wearing decent socks and my feet don't stink, lest I be traipsing dirty feet around her apartment. To this day, I'm not convinced that hardsole shoes that haven't walked through wet messes are substantially dirtier than a damp sock that's been inside a shoe all day long.
bschwindHN 7 hours ago [-]
I grew up in the suburbs in Ohio, the majority of my family and friends took their shoes off at the door.
I can't imagine feet in socks would be dirtier than the bottom of a shoe, but I guess it depends on where you walk, and how nasty you let your feet get. Like if you use a public restroom and then walk on carpets in your home, that's just gross. Maybe you walked in a park where dogs play. Good chance of tracking some dog shit into the house.
williamdclt 6 hours ago [-]
> To this day, I'm not convinced that hardsole shoes that haven't walked through wet messes are substantially dirtier than a damp sock that's been inside a shoe all day long.
Absolutely no way. Like, it's not even comparable, sweaty smelly feet are infinitely cleaner than a shoe that stepped outside just once.
Even if we only talk about visible dirtiness (which is probably the least of the uncleanliness), I've hosted dinner parties in my flat where people kept shoes one and others where they didn't, and the difference is very very obvious: disgusting floors after the former and normally-clean-looking floors after the latter
vkazanov 9 hours ago [-]
Is this how most of the world operates? :-)
bjelkeman-again 8 hours ago [-]
In the Nordics (SE, FI, NO, DK) it is pretty much the same. A large part of the year your shoes are a mess and you don’t want that indoors.
ACS_Solver 4 hours ago [-]
However, protective equipment is taken seriously and then shoes stay on. Here in Sweden, of course ordinarily all shoes are taken off (for 8-9 months of every year they're wet and dirty) but if workers come in to do some work, they keep their shoes on because they're protective equipment. If you're having them come during a particularly dirty time of the year, you may want to cover your floor with newspapers or give them shoe covers.
jillesvangurp 7 hours ago [-]
When I worked in Helsinki, it was quite common to see people do this in the office as well. Some people that were otherwise appropriately dressed (business casual) would be walking around on slippers. Always thought that was slightly funny. Very practical though. I had some rugged hiking boots that I wore in the winter there that definitely would come off when I got to work.
nottorp 6 hours ago [-]
I've been in small offices where having slippers wasn't mandatory, but everyone brought them just because they were more comfortable. Also in one where taking your shoes off or using those medical plastic covers was mandatory (in spite of the work being IT).
Romania. Typing this at the office, wearing slippers :)
vkazanov 8 hours ago [-]
Yeah! Same for finland, the baltic states, or poland, or russia, or any country really where there is any kind of serious winter happening.
culi 8 hours ago [-]
Eastern Europe is the same. I've only been in one house one time in the US where it was shoes off. It just felt wrong even though it wasn't carpeted and there were no rugs
zorobo 6 hours ago [-]
When we shifted houses and used a Japanese moving company, I was very surprised as movers removed their shoes every time they stepped into our places, both old and new.
Oh, they also had gloves on when packing our plates and utensils!
krupan 12 hours ago [-]
Does everyone in Japan wear slip-on shoes?
wahnfrieden 10 hours ago [-]
No
naishoya 9 hours ago [-]
um, pretty much, yes.
Even when it looks like a laced up tennis shoe, closer examination of an 'outdoor' shoe will show that it has been stomped into and slipped out of many times.
If it is a sports use, i.e. basketball or other gymnasium, or indoors in a professional setting like at a busy office there will be a changing area and people etiher change into provided slippers (town hall and community centers, schools, and other public spaces have many cubicles and slippers) or will change into 'indoor shoes' brought for the purpose.
There is a strong cultural 'habit' that can be interpreted as 'manners' such that when visiting someone's house and switching from outdoor shoes the host will then either turn the shoes toward the outdoors such that they are easier to step into on the way out, or will arrange them facing out but no longer in the main path of the entry way.
It is this 'manners' which the EMT is requesting to stop. The indoor slippers are used for hard floor and rug covered areas, but not tatami mats. A quality tatami mat can be damaged and require actual replacement if stepped on with a hard soled shoe even once.
So the 'taking off of shoes on the way in my EMT is quite appropriate, and the time to 'unshoe' and reshoe on the way in and out is cumulatively not more than 5 to 7 seconds total - if the emergency case is that close to failure, the low speed ambulance ride through narrow streets is going to be the failure, not the shoes. But rearranged and relocated shoes becomes much more complex when the crew have a person in a stretcher (which is faster AND safer than a rolling gurney) - they can step into their own shoes without really even looking if the shoes are left exactly as they were placed on the way in - and this is what the original article is requesting.
The intent of the article in original Japanese is: "Don't slow down the exit process by moving our shoes in an effort to be 'mindful of good manners'. We really wont think poorly of your manners if you neglect this small gesture"
kstrauser 8 hours ago [-]
For the love of goodness, if I'm having a heart attack or something, please do not waste 5 to 7 seconds total of my life to screw around with footgear instead of just coming inside and getting me. I promise I'd vastly rather have your shoes touch my carpet than die because of "manners".
timr 6 hours ago [-]
No. They don't. Every day I see huge numbers of people in lace up oxfords, high heels, and more. And no, people don't ruin their expensive shoes by crushing the heel cups. People do that for cheap shoes, sure, and professionals often wear slip on / slip off shoes intentionally, but it's by no means generalizable.
wahnfrieden 3 hours ago [-]
Wrong
naishoya 3 hours ago [-]
In Tokyo, or in the countryside?
anigbrowl 10 hours ago [-]
Firefighters in Japan wear boots and keep them on, but fire is generally cause for demolition anyway due to the way most homes are constructed.
The Japanese shoe taboo is about purity. It's not about protecting the floor but about the idea of cleanliness. Walking in with outdoor shoes is the equivalent of deliberately walking into a western home with dogshit all over your shoes, or (since most Japanese homes have small family altars inside) spiritual desecration.
vkazanov 9 hours ago [-]
People in the west tend to overthink spirituality.
Having been to houses/flats across all of eurasia, uk to hong kong, vietnam to lithuania, the majority prefers taking shoes when entering a house, but can be as practical as necessary when the need arises.
thih9 9 hours ago [-]
> Another user attracted more than 800 likes for suggesting that strict etiquette could perhaps be forsaken at such times: “It’s an emergency. I would just tell them: ‘Please step inside with your shoes on!’”
pvaldes 6 hours ago [-]
There are emergencies and emergencies, but removing your protective gear when you are entering in a emergency scenery is an horrible idea by several reasons.
After thousands of interventions in this places, you are basically guaranteed to step while in your sockets on blood, syringes, broken bottles and glass pieces. Awful idea. Your toes smashing the leg of a table if you have luck. Hepatitis or HIV if not.
Also removing shoes that were designed to assure maximum stability before to enter in an unknown scenery can be a big mistake. You will regret it later, trying desperately not slip while you navigate a stretcher on a narrow spiral staircase, carrying a heavy guy with a fractured leg.
theonething 12 hours ago [-]
tangential, but I don't understand why keeping your shoes on in your house is a thing. It's so unsanitary. The bottom of your shoes are in contact with things like the floor of public bathrooms, animal feces (when walking on grass), dirt, mud, etc.
And it's so much more comfortable to be in your house barefoot, with socks or with slippers.
So much cleaner. I'm disgusted when people try to walk in my house with their shoes on.
probably_wrong 10 hours ago [-]
Coming from a shoes-on culture I can give a couple points.
First, in the rare cases you describe (when was the last time you stepped on feces?) one would indeed leave their shoes outside. But in the day-to-day your shoes have some dust on them and that's it - you won't even notice it's there when compared to the dust that already accumulates daily. If you live in a climate where this assumption doesn't hold (snowy areas come to mind) then the equation changes.
Second, the floor is usually stone and therefore designed for being walked on with shoes. I would feel awkward walking on some polished wood, but if the difference between inside and outside is "this one is less coarse but just as hard" then I wouldn't see a good reason for taking my shoes off. I would probably avoid the rug, but that's me.
As for comfort, keeping your shoes on also means one less thing to do when going in and out. Do not underestimate the path with less friction.
ivell 9 hours ago [-]
I have seen in Switzerland that people leave their shoes at the entrance and switch to house shoes. Or they use a shoe cover when they enter house with shoes. Probably because houses are mostly wooden floored.
So shoes on is not universal in the West.
vkazanov 9 hours ago [-]
Most of the west outside of the US takes shoes off or swaps 'em for indoor shoes.
jerlam 7 hours ago [-]
Between "Most of the west" and "Asian countries" it seems like it's the vast majority of industrialized countries that take off or swap their shoes inside. There's just an odd blip of over-represented online people who don't.
probably_wrong 6 hours ago [-]
I'd like to see a citation for "most of the west".
hdgvhicv 8 hours ago [-]
Just not for emergency services!
10 hours ago [-]
naishoya 9 hours ago [-]
> when was the last time you stepped on feces?
Try this , when was the last time you stepped somewhere that had previously been stepped on by someone who had walked on a spot which had been stepped on by someone who may have stepped on a spot trod on by ... go far enough back and it's all had feces on it to some small degree.
An easy way to keep this concept clear and understand the reasoning behind a 'leave the outside shoes out of the house' is something learned as a child.
Just like there is a Law of Conservation of Mass, and a Law of Conservation of Energy, and these two are the same law as defined by Einstein, there is also a Law of Conservation of Filth. The law may be stated as: "A spoonful of wine in a barrel of pigshit is a barrel of pigshit. A spoonful of pigshit in a barrel of wine is... a barrel of pigshit."
Taking off the outdoor shoes to come indoors changes the "is there trace amount of feces on my dining room tatami floor?" risk from "I cannot be reasonable sure," to "I can be reasonably sure that there is none." If guests find that too much friction to understand and accommodate, one might argue for a different set of guests who are less accepting of an allowable amount of pigshit in their wine.
probably_wrong 8 hours ago [-]
I'm going to disagree with your law of "conservation of filth" on the grounds that it's pushing things too far. Whatever amount of feces comes into your system via walking downtown on a regular day and then bringing the shoes inside pales in comparison to the amount of fecal matter that enters via your toothbrush if you keep it in the bathroom. At some point a small amount of dirt is just fine, as evidenced by my immune system not even visibly reacting whenever I pick up and eat something that fell on the floor (as long as I follow the five-seconds rule). And people do go out to restaurants or, even worse, picnics, where all that separates their food from a much filthier surface is a piece of cloth.
I'm not going to say that every type of floor is to be walked on, with rugs and tatami mats being perfect counter-examples. But if a five-star restaurant doesn't ask me to take my shoes off (not evening Japan, AFAIK) then keeping them on is, from a sanitary point of view, probably okay.
b112 8 hours ago [-]
The toothbrush analogy is weird, and untrue in most cases. And regardless, just one time stepping in crap, would make up for a lifetime of a few molecules hitting a brush at random intervals.
And of course, toothpaste is a cleaner, so it's not relevant.
But I find this all amusing, because wherever you take your shoes off? That's where all this supposed crap sits from all these shoes left outside. Which means you are walking in your socks in that area, after shoe removal, and entering the house.
So unless you levitate out of that area, your feet are still covered in this supposed crap.
The shoe rule in Japan stems from damaging floors. And checking your feet, shoes or not, is just prudent. But your feet or clean looking shoes?
Equally dirty.
naishoya 3 hours ago [-]
> But your feet or clean looking shoes? Equally dirty.
Absolutely not equally dirty unless you have FILTHY feet. If so, take a bath.
samus 7 hours ago [-]
Of course one should not put the feet down where the shoes are stored.
b112 4 hours ago [-]
So do you levitate from the place you remove your shoes?
naishoya 3 hours ago [-]
No, you actually step out of your shoes an up to a wooden platform which shoes never trod. And yes, the top and even many middle level dining establishments in Japan actually do require guests to leave their street shoes in an entry way, called a Genkan.
Nobody steps with their socks onto shoe trodden surface. It's not a complicated but of geometry, you loosen your foot in the shoes to make them ready for stepping out from, then step up onto a raised and dirt free platform, then if you have good manners, turn around, lower yourself, and use one hand to collect and turn your shoes so that they are not in the direct line of traffic and are facing away from the house, so that one may step into them from the wooden platform without needing to step backwards as you exit. This is amazingly simple, done by literally millions of people every single day, multiple times, and has been this way for centuries in all kinds of weather and many styles of shoes.
There is no dirt tracked in on your socks, there may be some 'stepping on the top of your own shoes' if you are in a rush and clumsy or a child. But grown ups rarely have much difficulty with this unless they are visiting from somewhere else and cannot be observant. Nearly every doorway in the country also has a handy long handled shoehorn to ease the donning of your shoes without requiring a seat. Community centers and elderly homes and some households with elderly residents will also have a small stool that is at an oblique angle between the 'dirty' shoe level and the clean wooden platform, allowing one to sit and take off shoes, then swivel without putting feet onto filth and stand again in the clean.
I'm frankly astonished at the seemingly purposeful denseness of comprehension for a simple act of cleanliness. The 'filth will make us stronger' approach reminds me of the historical writings of the 10th-century Arab diplomat Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who chronicled the Volga Vikings (Rus') and was the inspiration for the 'Viking morning bowl' scene from the movie The 13th Warrior. Just 'Ewww'
wahnfrieden 3 hours ago [-]
How much time have you spent in Japan? The bare foot never touches the genkan floor. It's alarming to do so.
Since you can't imagine it, you could consider looking up some videos of their use before mocking what you consider a fantastical impossibility. In fact it's so easy that children and the elderly succeed at it.
adrian_b 9 hours ago [-]
When I grew up a half of century ago in East Europe, keeping your shoes on when entering a house was still considered as an unacceptable behavior.
However, later this changed, in good part because much of the population moved from bigger rural houses to smaller apartments in the cities. In a small apartment, there was not enough space to have at the entrance a big enough wardrobe with dedicated places for the visitors to store their shoes, and to provide slippers for them. Moreover, a small apartment was easier to clean after the visitors left.
Thus the customs changed, and it became normal when visitors came and attempted to remove their shoes, according to tradition, to assure them that there is no need to do that. Nowadays I think that few remember that in the past it was really mandatory to never enter a house with your shoes on.
watwut 9 hours ago [-]
Most prople I kmow live in appartment and take off shoes. It does not take much space.
rimliu 5 hours ago [-]
Nothing like that.
stevage 4 hours ago [-]
> tangential, but I don't understand why keeping your shoes on in your house is a thing.
I suspect it depends a lot on the climate, predominant style of housing etc. If you live in a nice climate and everyone has houses with backyards, you expect to be going in and out a lot all day. Very annoying to be constantly putting shoes on/off.
Personally, I just really don't care if the floor of my house is dirty. A thin smear of dog shit? If I can't smell it, I don't care. I'm not licking that floor. I'm not eating food off it. It's floor, it's basically in the same category as the ground outside: dirty.
I think of feet as dirty, so feet that go on the floor make the floor dirty.
askvictor 7 hours ago [-]
Cleanliness is overrated. Sure, it's great for surgery and if you actually have a wound, but your immune system needs pathogens to train on, or it does silly things like attacking your body, or reacting to pollens.
charcircuit 7 hours ago [-]
It civilized to live in a clean home instead of a dirty mess. Life is not just about maximizing your survival rate.
wpm 12 hours ago [-]
I'm the same way but if I pass out in my house I absolutely do not give a shit about any of that and don't want the EMTs wasting time taking their shoes off to save my ass.
WD-42 12 hours ago [-]
Plus walking barefoot in your home is a good way to sense when you need to sweep or vacuum.
lokar 10 hours ago [-]
I’d say it’s a good way to tell when you should have swept up a few days ago.
jimjimjim 11 hours ago [-]
Do you have a pet dog or cat?
thih9 9 hours ago [-]
An indoor cat would still be consistent with this philosophy. They do their business indoors, but so do humans.
Anecdote, I recall reading about older family members being disgusted by the removal of outhouses and the idea of shitting indoors.
bigstrat2003 12 hours ago [-]
There's nothing unsanitary about it. The bottoms of your shoes simply are not that dirty unless you're walking through abnormally dirty situations.
Gigachad 12 hours ago [-]
That's the whole function of shoes though. If outside was as clean as my floors at home, I wouldn't need shoes.
I have to imagine the person who leaves their shoes on either never goes outside, or just has filthy floors.
Grombobulous 12 hours ago [-]
That is not the primary function of shoes. The function of shoes is to support your feet, protect them from harsh surfaces, keep them dry.
Unlike the commenter above you, I don’t really agree that it’s completely sanitary, though. I’m just saying that keeping you clean is actually pretty far down the list.
Another thing about whether the floor is sanitary: that changes a lot based on how you use your floor. If you eat, sleep, or sit on the floor often like in a traditional Japanese home, keeping the floor clean is a lot more important.
Izkata 12 hours ago [-]
The "support your feet" argument came from the belief that everyone is supposed to have a prominent arch and that shoes could force your feet into that shape, but as far as I knew had been thoroughly refuted over the past 15-20 years. Forcing your feet into having an arch when it's not your natural form can actually cause problems further down the line. Soles not being flexible also changes how you use your ankle and IIRC how you balance while walking, possibly contributing to back problems.
Keeping your feet clean and protecting them from surfaces are the primary purposes of shoes. Some people need them for support after having worn shoes too often (my parents are in this situation and have a separate set of "indoor shoes" just for this), or some sort of disability that needs those super-wide-sole shoes, but in general they are not for supporting your feet.
Grombobulous 12 hours ago [-]
I’m really not talking about arches, just talking about easing uneven terrain and enhancing grip and things like that.
Hiking boots can significantly enhance stability and of course walking over sharp rocks becomes trivial.
I also forgot to mention steel toed boots, no slip restaurant shoes, and other injury-protective shoes.
Then you’ve got temperature: hot pavement, cold snow.
eqvinox 12 hours ago [-]
> That's the whole function of shoes though.
Nah, the main function of shoes is (to support your feet and) prevent injury. Cleanliness is second on the list.
[ed.: added braces]
Gigachad 12 hours ago [-]
Your feet do not need support, they were evolved over millions of years to support themselves. Someone who habitually wears shoes indoors might lose the muscle strength in their feet in the same way someone who drives everywhere loses leg strength, but this isn't natural or optimal.
eqvinox 12 hours ago [-]
Sorry, I phrased that poorly. The muscular support is its own thing (and I agree with you) but your soles don't deal well with hot summer asphalt surfaces, glass shards or even small pebbles surfaces.
Gigachad 12 hours ago [-]
I agree, but those bits of glass shards and pebbles end up wedged in shoes and released indoors. Shoes outdoors are important, but the exact stuff they are protecting you against is the stuff you don't want in your carpets.
jimmydddd 12 hours ago [-]
Agreed. But you have to go shoeless throughout your youth so that the bones and muscles of the foot grow strong. This is true, for example, with kids in some African countries. There was a trend of barefoot running in the US in the 2010's (see Barefoot Sensei), but most people who tried this ended up quitting it as it's hard to shift to this style in, say, your 40's, after a lifetime of wearing shoes.
thaumasiotes 7 hours ago [-]
> But you have to go shoeless throughout your youth so that the bones and muscles of the foot grow strong.
Well, more directly, if you want to be going around barefoot outside, you have to go barefoot for a while in order to harden the skin on the bottom of your feet. It will happen naturally, given enough time, but walking around outdoors with soft feet will hurt like crazy. Bones and muscles are secondary.
In an American context, the primary reason to wear shoes is to prevent parasites on the ground from infecting you through your feet. Shoes are the single most important public health measure in American history, beating out handwashing.
We didn't evolve to walk on concrete and asphalt, though.
samus 7 hours ago [-]
Our feet were not evolved to walk over stone and concrete all day.
qsera 12 hours ago [-]
> they were evolved over millions of years to support themselves.
But not on hard floor.
ryan_lane 8 hours ago [-]
People in shoes off houses tend to have slippers or house shoes, which never go outside. They also tend to have bathroom slippers, which are only ever used in the toilet areas.
jimjimjim 11 hours ago [-]
It depends what you do outside. Historically shoes/boots/foot wraps were to protect your feet from the cold and from sharp things e.g. rocks, stones, spiky plants, spiders, snakes, ticks etc etc. Surely some of these conditions would still exist today even if outside was clean.
alfg 12 hours ago [-]
Like outside? It's so wild to me how some can step into their living space (or even bedroom) with the same shoes they use outside.
Balooga 12 hours ago [-]
Having grown up in South Africa, moving to the states was the first time I ever heard of such a thing as a peanut allergy, or shrimp allergy, or gluten allergy, or any kind of allergy that wasn't having to wear a medic-alert bracelet to indicate an allergic reaction to penicillin.
Removing one's shoes before entering a house isn't a thing in South Africa.
Filth can sometimes be a good thing.
ryan_lane 8 hours ago [-]
I've lived in both shoes on and shoes off households and I'm sorry, but shoes are filthy. I wipe my dogs paws when they comes in from walks and their paws are filthy and I wipe them every single time they come back in from walks. Shoes are never wiped.
Take a second, get a tissue, and go wipe the bottom of your shoe.
dzhiurgis 12 hours ago [-]
Every country is different. I’m in China right now and while there isn’t much rubbish - it is still pretty dirty. Whereas in New Zealand you can walk barefoot all day and your feet will stay clean (matter of fact thats my kids do literally all the time).
Then sanitation itself is a but of a moot. Bacteria can spread million different ways, it’s mostly futile fight. If you wear flip-flops all day and don’t wash your feet, don’t shower after using public bathrooms, etc - whats the point?
swingandamiss 13 hours ago [-]
More Japanese obsessed hacker news posts. What's up with this? There's a daily post on HN of various topics, usually something obscure, about Japan. Why?
Enginerrrd 12 hours ago [-]
I think it’s just that Japanese culture represents a very sophisticated antithesis to many western cultural pillars. Collectivism over individualism, incredible development of the aesthetics of simplicity and emptiness compared to the ostentatious and sometimes baroque western aesthetics, neat and tidy compared to cluttered, the fanatical emphasis on mastery of technique, or things that can’t be produced via shortcuts, etc etc. Overall I think the Japanese are viewed as much more disciplined and conscientious which is valued in the west. And a lot of these things seem like wizardry to Americans because we’re lacking the routines and building blocks that lead to it. In essence the Japanese are very process oriented, and Americans see the results and want them but don’t understand the process side of things as it’s not intrinsic to our culture. Yet the results are admirable… whether or not Americans would actually want to live the process that leads to those results is another story. That’s the gist of it I think.
kstrauser 7 hours ago [-]
> incredible development of the aesthetics of simplicity and emptiness compared to the ostentatious and sometimes baroque western aesthetics
We're just going to pretend that Japanese web design is identical to the rest of the world's, and that Japanese homes aren't half the size of elsewhere such that every horizontal and vertical service is commonly used for storage.
pezezin 9 hours ago [-]
> neat and tidy compared to cluttered
People who think this have actually never been to Japan, most Japanese homes and offices are incredibly messy.
ahartmetz 7 hours ago [-]
You don't even need to go there, just look at Japanese websites.
shoobiedoo 6 hours ago [-]
I live in Japan and in the rare event that there is an online option when I need to do something related to government documents, banking, insurance, or the like, all I can think is-- "wtf is this, geocities?".
It's always a clunky, awkward, boxed in mess of text that is a miracle in the case that it actually works. But that's just the way it is here. Lots of elderly, and the elderly prefer a nice helpful receptionist, I guess?
pezezin 4 hours ago [-]
According to my Japanese GF, the elders don't understand it either. She had to setup some banking services for her dad and it was a painful mess, but doing it in person is equally annoying. So at this point it is a fucking mystery who actually likes the system and why nobody tries to change anything.
vkazanov 9 hours ago [-]
Reality should never stand in thr way of a good export-oriented myth :-)
Der_Einzige 19 minutes ago [-]
Go look at the demographics of how many HN members are in Wmaf relationships and it’ll explain itself perfectly to a tee…
rayiner 12 hours ago [-]
Because Japan is amazing. Probably especially so for a crowd that tends towards orderly-minded engineering types like HN.
jwrallie 8 hours ago [-]
I could be mistaken but I think most of those posts seem to show up around business hours in Japan. My guess is it is coming from expats living there.
alfg 12 hours ago [-]
Cultural differences, especially with increased tourism in Japan lately. There's a lot we can learn from each other and people like to share their experiences. Is it really that surprising these topics come up more often?
samus 7 hours ago [-]
Sure, but there are a lot of non-western cultures out there. What's surprising is the prevalence of posts regarding Japanese culture.
MrDrMcCoy 12 hours ago [-]
I expect the simplicity of the site's design appeals to the Japanese.
oliculipolicula 13 hours ago [-]
As I understand it, Japan is seen to be like a parallel universe where the American South successfully seceded but became technologically advanced, even surpassing the North in some areas (by adopting a Meiji type constitutional monarchy)
eqvinox 13 hours ago [-]
Having been to Japan several times… and actually studying Japanese studies… I can see why you're saying this but it's very superficial. None of the southern "essence" that caused the split & war is there in Japan at this point. Or do you mean it's as if the South seceded, then proceeded to lose anyway due their policies being a natural disadvantage, and then developed, out-northing the North?
What is characteristic of "the American South" here?
jankcorn 12 hours ago [-]
When I lived in Japan and was asked "Why are you interested in Japan?", I used to respond "It is the only non-Western country(at the time) where I have seen an extremely high level of technical/economic development and it is interesting to see similiarities/differences". (This is of course, long long before the rise of modern China)
The society is based so strongly on group cohesion and de-emphasis of the individual, the experience of living there is very, very different than the West.
I think that this "deep cultural difference" is what the original comment was trying to get at. Sadly the reference point of "American South" ended up triggering a different (less useful) trajectory for the responses.
eqvinox 12 hours ago [-]
Does the American South actually have that kind of group cohesion?
oliculipolicula 8 hours ago [-]
The kind of group cohesion you have in Japan tiday wasn't quite all there during the Meiji era (they'd just come out of a civil war, after all. Then there were also sporadic uprisings for decades after
(Taiwanese would be negroes loyal to the Cause, and Ainu would be the native Americans)
LPisGood 13 hours ago [-]
Presumably the characteristic being referred to is superficial politeness mixed with racism or xenophobia.
eqvinox 12 hours ago [-]
That does actually kinda make sense, but it works very differently... the politeness is anything but superficial (even counters the racism and xenophobia to a limited degree, but also hides it, coming out to ±0), and the latter two are indeed present but coded as to be ashamed of rather than proud… (unfortunately the coding of shame is also different and doesn't spurn action).
It actually makes it harder to tackle the discrimination, since it's not openly admitted. Glass walls and ceiling.
'There is a "virtual taboo" in the Japanese media against discussing the topic, leading to widespread public ignorance.')
rayiner 12 hours ago [-]
You may think that because of the nationalism, but that's a superficial similarity. Outside western europeans, almost everyone is nationalistic, so that's not a useful characteristic in comparing societies. Aside from that, the American south is more like the Arab world/India--disorderly, combative, face-saving culture, and food-, family-, and faith-centric. The Japanese are much more like Mormons.
Grombobulous 12 hours ago [-]
The “became technologically advanced” part of this hypothetical is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
kmeisthax 11 hours ago [-]
Yes and no.
The biggest historical commonality between the American South and Japan - or, at least, the Tokugawa shogunate that was ruling around the same time as the South - was that both of them were at one point ruled by a cabal of essentially feudal lords. There is a lot of convergent social evolution that happens when your country's economic elite all make their money by owning land - lots of strange social titles, honorifics start floating around, people start talking around problems, and the like. However, this comparison is only skin deep, and there's plenty of things the Tokugawas did that have no parallel, or even worked backwards, to what happened in the historically contemporaneous American south:
- Sakoku (the policy of keeping Japan completely closed to trade and immigration).
- While America generally has had a long streak of veneration of the police, they never reinvented anything close to the samurai in terms of being a hereditary warrior class with a tax stipend.
- Likewise, the American South did not have a caste system; Japan did (and so did France?!?)
This makes more sense when you remember that the Tokugawa shogunate itself is the time reversal of the American South: the Tokugawas were born out of a long civil war and ended with a foreign invasion (from America) while the American South was born from foreign invasion (of Americans) and ended with a civil war.
The American South is also, interestingly enough, a mirror of Japan in other dimensions as well. The reason why the Tokugawas shut the country's borders for hundreds of years was because they understood that Christian missionaries were a front for a larger invasion force that would pillage the country's resources and abduct people to become slaves in other countries. Of course, the South was buying slaves abducted in other countries in massive quantities.
Going back to the convergent social evolution I mentioned before, you can see some of this in Japan today. Kyoto is notorious for doing exactly the same kind of backhanded compliment bullshit the South loves doing. But even then, that's one part of Japan, that was formerly the capital city. One stop on the Shinkansen takes you to Osaka where people are about as open and outgoing as Americans are.
samus 6 hours ago [-]
> The reason why the Tokugawas shut the country's borders for hundreds of years was because they understood that Christian missionaries were a front for a larger invasion force that would pillage the country's resources and abduct people to become slaves in other countries.
They simply didn't want another religion. Buddhism was already troublesome enough with a long history of popular uprisings and many monasteries having become as powerful as daimyos. Oda Nobunaga had been mostly tolerant of religions and also of Christians, but he is infamous for bloody curbing their power. The Tokugawa didn't want any of that from happening again, regardless which religion.
There was also a strong motivation to deflate the power of the port cities. They were often in the hands of untrusted daimyos because the Tokugawa prioritized controlling inland regions with farmland and important road connections to keep the economy running and to ensure that troops could be deployed everywhere and kept supplied in case of rebellions.
gverrilla 12 hours ago [-]
it's related to fascist ideas of japanese people being unique and people in the west joining that stupid 'philosophy'.
Personally I got so tired of it we got those "one-use blue shoe covers" that we tell them to wear before going in, but of course I don't think either of us would think about that if we called for emergency services.
I was not brought up in a religious household and have never been a follower of any known religion. And I do not have any belief tied to this behavior. It is an oddity of my being that I accept.
Isn’t it interesting how one can be conditioned so? I sometimes wonder if alcoholics or drug addicts feel this way.
Perhaps the Japanese feel this way about their cultural quirk in the way I feel about mine.
This is something I've noticed is uniquely culturally Indian, and transcends all religions. Which is beautiful.
I was once whacked in the head by a teacher for throwing a book onto the shelf, and rightly so.
And I highly doubt that, in general, 'whacking' children will make them grow up kinder more compassionate adults.
Considering the rationale offered by Hindus, I’d be inclined to believe it is a Hindu custom adopted by everyone else by virtue of relative numbers. Sort of like how Christmas is secular in the US, Diwali in India, and perhaps weaker something like Eid in Jordan.
So I agree, very little to do with religion today, but perhaps not so always. Something like Halloween perhaps.
There's photos in the article, those aren't dress shoes with laces to be done and undone, they're fit for the purpose.
Also in cases where it's really dire they'll just step in with shoes on, it's just extremely rare and it might actually be another team altogether, operating under a different protocol.
What about when you're three people while carrying a person? According to the article, it can delay them by ~30 seconds and risk dislodging the oxygen mask, the linked video also demonstrates the difference: https://www.instagram.com/p/DbqGfGfox3f/
Might seem like a small difference, but add in a stressful situation with a person almost dying, maybe being in pain, and the emergency workers trying to keep calm while also suddenly not finding their shoes in the position they purposefully left them, and suddenly the difference might be much large and also impactful.
Like turning the thumblock, moving the bench, shoving other people's shoes in the way etc. There is a myriad of things the patient's family can do that result in 30s delays. Sure removing one specific potential cause could have value, but it might not be worth it considering the downsides (someone will have to deal with the mess, sometimes the lone elderly who's already in pain but not 30s from death either)
I think too many people are focusing on the "emergency" part, when most of the interventions aren't about shoving off every second. Other commentators picked up on the ambulances rolling into intersections at a snail's pace while blasting their sirens full volume, because they care a lot more about secundary harm than reaching the hospital 10s earlier.
What mess? They're taking off their shoes regardless, and there is no additional mess being created by the resident not reorganizing the shoes of the paramedics.
There is no downsides here, just stop moving stuff around, pretty basic and no cost at all for stop doing so.
I bet you don't have children. 2s might be too late in an emergency.
So people are already doing this multiple times a day at their own homes and form a habit that often doesn't require much thought to follow.
Isn't it reasonable/normal to take shoes off at work and put on indoor does like sandals or similar ("work shoes")? Obviously it depends on the job, but it seems reasonable to me at a radio station. And if the regular employees are wearing indoor shoes, then it might become normal for outdoor shoes to not be typically worn inside.
(Where I live, this is the norm at home, but not at office or public places.)
For instance for an elderly couple living together but both being pretty weak, if one's oxygen level was falling they probably couldn't get to the hospital for a full checkup by themselves. They'll call for help, these people will come, fit the patient with anything needed to safely make the trip, and move them out of the appartment to the nearest hospital.
There will be no need to trash the floor in precipitation, and they might spend some time in the appartement to properly access the situation and make it safe. They'll still want to be able to evacuate the person quickly if/when needed, but there will be a lot more to consider as well.
I'm not surprised the person last mentioned in the article, who suggests exactly that, got 800 likes on their comment. I am surprised that it even needed to be said.
Now I'm suddenly wondering (probably stupidly) whether firefighters also take their shoes off when entering a burning building.
> In Dutch culture it is far more common to keep shoes on literally everywhere
It is in many cultures, including my own family's, but having gotten used to taking them off from living in Japan, I find it extremely strange taking them off is not more common.
It feel similar to doctors refusing to wash their hands during surgery, though I get I'm not doing surgery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
I never thought about it growing up but once I got used to it I can believe I used to walk across my house carpet in shoes that had dog shit, grease, and other grim in them, and then later lie on my floor and watch TV or whatever. I don't get why people don't see that and get grossed out more.
Sure, if they were covered in mud or feces then I'd take then off but for small amounts I wouldn't notice. Why that doesn't matter to more people seems more strange to me than the status quo.
That said, I don’t think it’s really rational. Our houses are full of bacteria and dirt one way or another anyway. It’s impossible to avoid that without having some kind of airlock equipped with a shower in your porch.
Old farmer style houses in Japan have an entrance area behind the main sliding doors in bare soil[1], and a wooden platform at waist height between it to hallways. The platform can be sat on to take off shoes or to drop off bags of produces, and then hallways and tatami matted areas are further raised an inch or two - the walking floor level of houses are therefore give or take a whole feet off the ground. These together create multiple mental boundaries for dirtiness.
Modern houses have it miniaturized into just a cinder-block high gap or sometimes just industrial colored tiles before a bump. But IMO it's still nice being able to leave wet shoes and umbrellas there.
1: 土間 or doma, meaning soil-space. Oddly this transliteration coincides with "home" in Russian(and of course rhymes with Latin domus).
True, but I don't know about you, but we don't have literal rocks, sediment, dirt pee, or literal poop on our floors in our home, anywhere. But shoes do occasionally step on stuff like that no matter how small, and neither of those things I want inside of my house on the floor.
But you're right that there still is bacteria or dirt all over the place, no doubt. But still, I don't step on something slightly soft with my socks in the living room and then inspect my foot to find poop stuck to it, and I think I'm gonna continue to prefer this way.
This is basically what dust is. It’s everywhere.
> This is basically what dust is. It’s everywhere.
What?
> Dust in homes is composed of about 20–50% dead skin cells.[2] The rest, and in offices and other built environments, is composed of small amounts of plant pollen, human hairs, animal fur, textile fibers, paper fibers, minerals from outdoor soil, burnt meteorite particles, and many other materials which may be found in the local environment.[3]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust
Further: dust is floating in the air and can be removed with decent (MERV ≥11) air filters in your HVAC system. Stuff on the bottom of your shoe makes contact with your floor and stick around until you wash it (and for much longer in the fibre of carpet or rugs).
But ambulances in with full sirens begging over their speaker-system to have pedestrians at Shibuya crossing let the vehicle through, is probably the worst thing about Japan.
As for your second question, I’m reminded of Bob Mortimer in Would I lie To You: “… then the fire brigade came and ruined the whole house” - “Bob, surely the fire was ruining the house” - “No, water damage”. Maybe if those darn firefighters had taken their boots off, there had been a bit more left of Bobs childhood home.
That's what we learned in fire fighting training. Everything that doesn't get destroyed by the fire and smoke will get destroyed by the water you use to put the fire out. A house on fire is lost. You just save people and animals and then you do whatever you need to protect the neighbouring structures.
Unfortunately ambulances in Japan blare their sirens any time they are transporting a patient, and because they are free some people use them like taxis. So you may see an ambulance at 2AM driving down a residential street blaring their siren at full volume, going 5 mph while the medics call around to various hospitals to see who will take their patient with an upset stomach.
Once I passed a moving ambulance with the siren on...while slowly riding my bike down an otherwise empty road.
The result is that Japanese people seem to tune out the siren. If the driver isn't also on the loudspeaker telling them insistently to move aside, they assume it's not a "real" emergency.
Bob should have used some of his Fuji 9, that fixes everything!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatami
Throughout my fire and EMS training I was taught to anticipate possible violence from the residents. I personally know folks who have entered buildings and been shot at or found booby traps. One guy I know responded to an arson house fire where the resident had cut out holes in the floor under every window and door and covered the holes with rugs, Home Alone style.
The US has a serious drug and mental health crisis. First responders often have to deal with people who probably would be in state care if we didn't spend all our tax money on bombs and tax cuts for the wealthy. Or at least they would have caretakers who visit and help them take medications and escalate when they start setting up booby traps to defend against the voices.
Depending on the boots, you might not want to wear them while "idle"¹ in any case, though that's mostly a non-concern with modern safety shoes.
¹ mandatory note: most emergency responders have tons of work while "idle", I just mean "not actively responding"
Also, in my town, the firefighters are also paramedics. The first people who showed up in my Moment of Need came in a fire truck. The ambulance came a couple minutes later.
The hospital facilities team removed the front doors and the unboltable parts of the frame, and then gassed off the handrails and wheelchair ramp fittings to give access.
The ambulance arrived followed by a fire brigade Landrover with four guys in and a rescue pump with another five. It took all of them to lift the patient into the hospital on a canvas sling.
Anyway I’m not against paramedics wearing boots in my apartment, in an emergency very few people would care about that even in Japan.
This seems like the best policy in an emergency where 30 seconds actually matters. And I actually like the East Asian custom of taking one's shoes off before entering a house and adopt it myself.
Similarly in the military. We got un-booted at bedtime, and put them back on when we got up the next morning. Even in the barracks, including the nice ones that were reasonably nice apartment buildings, I never took off my shoes to walk around my room or when visiting someone else's (and vice versa; no one took off their shoes to visit me).
The first time I bumped into that rule was when I met my wife, who'd moved to the area from New York. I was quite confused when she asked me to take my shoes off at the door, and more than a little anxious. Sure hope I'm wearing decent socks and my feet don't stink, lest I be traipsing dirty feet around her apartment. To this day, I'm not convinced that hardsole shoes that haven't walked through wet messes are substantially dirtier than a damp sock that's been inside a shoe all day long.
I can't imagine feet in socks would be dirtier than the bottom of a shoe, but I guess it depends on where you walk, and how nasty you let your feet get. Like if you use a public restroom and then walk on carpets in your home, that's just gross. Maybe you walked in a park where dogs play. Good chance of tracking some dog shit into the house.
Absolutely no way. Like, it's not even comparable, sweaty smelly feet are infinitely cleaner than a shoe that stepped outside just once.
Even if we only talk about visible dirtiness (which is probably the least of the uncleanliness), I've hosted dinner parties in my flat where people kept shoes one and others where they didn't, and the difference is very very obvious: disgusting floors after the former and normally-clean-looking floors after the latter
Romania. Typing this at the office, wearing slippers :)
Even when it looks like a laced up tennis shoe, closer examination of an 'outdoor' shoe will show that it has been stomped into and slipped out of many times.
If it is a sports use, i.e. basketball or other gymnasium, or indoors in a professional setting like at a busy office there will be a changing area and people etiher change into provided slippers (town hall and community centers, schools, and other public spaces have many cubicles and slippers) or will change into 'indoor shoes' brought for the purpose.
There is a strong cultural 'habit' that can be interpreted as 'manners' such that when visiting someone's house and switching from outdoor shoes the host will then either turn the shoes toward the outdoors such that they are easier to step into on the way out, or will arrange them facing out but no longer in the main path of the entry way.
It is this 'manners' which the EMT is requesting to stop. The indoor slippers are used for hard floor and rug covered areas, but not tatami mats. A quality tatami mat can be damaged and require actual replacement if stepped on with a hard soled shoe even once.
So the 'taking off of shoes on the way in my EMT is quite appropriate, and the time to 'unshoe' and reshoe on the way in and out is cumulatively not more than 5 to 7 seconds total - if the emergency case is that close to failure, the low speed ambulance ride through narrow streets is going to be the failure, not the shoes. But rearranged and relocated shoes becomes much more complex when the crew have a person in a stretcher (which is faster AND safer than a rolling gurney) - they can step into their own shoes without really even looking if the shoes are left exactly as they were placed on the way in - and this is what the original article is requesting.
The intent of the article in original Japanese is: "Don't slow down the exit process by moving our shoes in an effort to be 'mindful of good manners'. We really wont think poorly of your manners if you neglect this small gesture"
The Japanese shoe taboo is about purity. It's not about protecting the floor but about the idea of cleanliness. Walking in with outdoor shoes is the equivalent of deliberately walking into a western home with dogshit all over your shoes, or (since most Japanese homes have small family altars inside) spiritual desecration.
Having been to houses/flats across all of eurasia, uk to hong kong, vietnam to lithuania, the majority prefers taking shoes when entering a house, but can be as practical as necessary when the need arises.
After thousands of interventions in this places, you are basically guaranteed to step while in your sockets on blood, syringes, broken bottles and glass pieces. Awful idea. Your toes smashing the leg of a table if you have luck. Hepatitis or HIV if not.
Also removing shoes that were designed to assure maximum stability before to enter in an unknown scenery can be a big mistake. You will regret it later, trying desperately not slip while you navigate a stretcher on a narrow spiral staircase, carrying a heavy guy with a fractured leg.
And it's so much more comfortable to be in your house barefoot, with socks or with slippers.
So much cleaner. I'm disgusted when people try to walk in my house with their shoes on.
First, in the rare cases you describe (when was the last time you stepped on feces?) one would indeed leave their shoes outside. But in the day-to-day your shoes have some dust on them and that's it - you won't even notice it's there when compared to the dust that already accumulates daily. If you live in a climate where this assumption doesn't hold (snowy areas come to mind) then the equation changes.
Second, the floor is usually stone and therefore designed for being walked on with shoes. I would feel awkward walking on some polished wood, but if the difference between inside and outside is "this one is less coarse but just as hard" then I wouldn't see a good reason for taking my shoes off. I would probably avoid the rug, but that's me.
As for comfort, keeping your shoes on also means one less thing to do when going in and out. Do not underestimate the path with less friction.
So shoes on is not universal in the West.
Try this , when was the last time you stepped somewhere that had previously been stepped on by someone who had walked on a spot which had been stepped on by someone who may have stepped on a spot trod on by ... go far enough back and it's all had feces on it to some small degree.
An easy way to keep this concept clear and understand the reasoning behind a 'leave the outside shoes out of the house' is something learned as a child.
Just like there is a Law of Conservation of Mass, and a Law of Conservation of Energy, and these two are the same law as defined by Einstein, there is also a Law of Conservation of Filth. The law may be stated as: "A spoonful of wine in a barrel of pigshit is a barrel of pigshit. A spoonful of pigshit in a barrel of wine is... a barrel of pigshit."
Taking off the outdoor shoes to come indoors changes the "is there trace amount of feces on my dining room tatami floor?" risk from "I cannot be reasonable sure," to "I can be reasonably sure that there is none." If guests find that too much friction to understand and accommodate, one might argue for a different set of guests who are less accepting of an allowable amount of pigshit in their wine.
I'm not going to say that every type of floor is to be walked on, with rugs and tatami mats being perfect counter-examples. But if a five-star restaurant doesn't ask me to take my shoes off (not evening Japan, AFAIK) then keeping them on is, from a sanitary point of view, probably okay.
And of course, toothpaste is a cleaner, so it's not relevant.
But I find this all amusing, because wherever you take your shoes off? That's where all this supposed crap sits from all these shoes left outside. Which means you are walking in your socks in that area, after shoe removal, and entering the house.
So unless you levitate out of that area, your feet are still covered in this supposed crap.
The shoe rule in Japan stems from damaging floors. And checking your feet, shoes or not, is just prudent. But your feet or clean looking shoes?
Equally dirty.
Absolutely not equally dirty unless you have FILTHY feet. If so, take a bath.
Nobody steps with their socks onto shoe trodden surface. It's not a complicated but of geometry, you loosen your foot in the shoes to make them ready for stepping out from, then step up onto a raised and dirt free platform, then if you have good manners, turn around, lower yourself, and use one hand to collect and turn your shoes so that they are not in the direct line of traffic and are facing away from the house, so that one may step into them from the wooden platform without needing to step backwards as you exit. This is amazingly simple, done by literally millions of people every single day, multiple times, and has been this way for centuries in all kinds of weather and many styles of shoes.
There is no dirt tracked in on your socks, there may be some 'stepping on the top of your own shoes' if you are in a rush and clumsy or a child. But grown ups rarely have much difficulty with this unless they are visiting from somewhere else and cannot be observant. Nearly every doorway in the country also has a handy long handled shoehorn to ease the donning of your shoes without requiring a seat. Community centers and elderly homes and some households with elderly residents will also have a small stool that is at an oblique angle between the 'dirty' shoe level and the clean wooden platform, allowing one to sit and take off shoes, then swivel without putting feet onto filth and stand again in the clean.
I'm frankly astonished at the seemingly purposeful denseness of comprehension for a simple act of cleanliness. The 'filth will make us stronger' approach reminds me of the historical writings of the 10th-century Arab diplomat Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who chronicled the Volga Vikings (Rus') and was the inspiration for the 'Viking morning bowl' scene from the movie The 13th Warrior. Just 'Ewww'
Since you can't imagine it, you could consider looking up some videos of their use before mocking what you consider a fantastical impossibility. In fact it's so easy that children and the elderly succeed at it.
However, later this changed, in good part because much of the population moved from bigger rural houses to smaller apartments in the cities. In a small apartment, there was not enough space to have at the entrance a big enough wardrobe with dedicated places for the visitors to store their shoes, and to provide slippers for them. Moreover, a small apartment was easier to clean after the visitors left.
Thus the customs changed, and it became normal when visitors came and attempted to remove their shoes, according to tradition, to assure them that there is no need to do that. Nowadays I think that few remember that in the past it was really mandatory to never enter a house with your shoes on.
I suspect it depends a lot on the climate, predominant style of housing etc. If you live in a nice climate and everyone has houses with backyards, you expect to be going in and out a lot all day. Very annoying to be constantly putting shoes on/off.
Personally, I just really don't care if the floor of my house is dirty. A thin smear of dog shit? If I can't smell it, I don't care. I'm not licking that floor. I'm not eating food off it. It's floor, it's basically in the same category as the ground outside: dirty.
I think of feet as dirty, so feet that go on the floor make the floor dirty.
Anecdote, I recall reading about older family members being disgusted by the removal of outhouses and the idea of shitting indoors.
I have to imagine the person who leaves their shoes on either never goes outside, or just has filthy floors.
Unlike the commenter above you, I don’t really agree that it’s completely sanitary, though. I’m just saying that keeping you clean is actually pretty far down the list.
Another thing about whether the floor is sanitary: that changes a lot based on how you use your floor. If you eat, sleep, or sit on the floor often like in a traditional Japanese home, keeping the floor clean is a lot more important.
Keeping your feet clean and protecting them from surfaces are the primary purposes of shoes. Some people need them for support after having worn shoes too often (my parents are in this situation and have a separate set of "indoor shoes" just for this), or some sort of disability that needs those super-wide-sole shoes, but in general they are not for supporting your feet.
Hiking boots can significantly enhance stability and of course walking over sharp rocks becomes trivial.
I also forgot to mention steel toed boots, no slip restaurant shoes, and other injury-protective shoes.
Then you’ve got temperature: hot pavement, cold snow.
Nah, the main function of shoes is (to support your feet and) prevent injury. Cleanliness is second on the list.
[ed.: added braces]
Well, more directly, if you want to be going around barefoot outside, you have to go barefoot for a while in order to harden the skin on the bottom of your feet. It will happen naturally, given enough time, but walking around outdoors with soft feet will hurt like crazy. Bones and muscles are secondary.
In an American context, the primary reason to wear shoes is to prevent parasites on the ground from infecting you through your feet. Shoes are the single most important public health measure in American history, beating out handwashing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necator_americanus
But not on hard floor.
Removing one's shoes before entering a house isn't a thing in South Africa.
Filth can sometimes be a good thing.
Take a second, get a tissue, and go wipe the bottom of your shoe.
Then sanitation itself is a but of a moot. Bacteria can spread million different ways, it’s mostly futile fight. If you wear flip-flops all day and don’t wash your feet, don’t shower after using public bathrooms, etc - whats the point?
We're just going to pretend that Japanese web design is identical to the rest of the world's, and that Japanese homes aren't half the size of elsewhere such that every horizontal and vertical service is commonly used for storage.
People who think this have actually never been to Japan, most Japanese homes and offices are incredibly messy.
It's always a clunky, awkward, boxed in mess of text that is a miracle in the case that it actually works. But that's just the way it is here. Lots of elderly, and the elderly prefer a nice helpful receptionist, I guess?
What is characteristic of "the American South" here?
The society is based so strongly on group cohesion and de-emphasis of the individual, the experience of living there is very, very different than the West.
I think that this "deep cultural difference" is what the original comment was trying to get at. Sadly the reference point of "American South" ended up triggering a different (less useful) trajectory for the responses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichibu_incident)
The following may help--- if you think of Othello as a kind of ideal southern gentleman, as the Japanese sort of did
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Othello-in-Tokyo%3A-Pe...
Now a Alt-Dixie readaptation of that adaptation must of course be the story of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest
(Taiwanese would be negroes loyal to the Cause, and Ainu would be the native Americans)
It actually makes it harder to tackle the discrimination, since it's not openly admitted. Glass walls and ceiling.
(Recommended read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin
'There is a "virtual taboo" in the Japanese media against discussing the topic, leading to widespread public ignorance.')
The biggest historical commonality between the American South and Japan - or, at least, the Tokugawa shogunate that was ruling around the same time as the South - was that both of them were at one point ruled by a cabal of essentially feudal lords. There is a lot of convergent social evolution that happens when your country's economic elite all make their money by owning land - lots of strange social titles, honorifics start floating around, people start talking around problems, and the like. However, this comparison is only skin deep, and there's plenty of things the Tokugawas did that have no parallel, or even worked backwards, to what happened in the historically contemporaneous American south:
- Sakoku (the policy of keeping Japan completely closed to trade and immigration).
- While America generally has had a long streak of veneration of the police, they never reinvented anything close to the samurai in terms of being a hereditary warrior class with a tax stipend.
- Likewise, the American South did not have a caste system; Japan did (and so did France?!?)
This makes more sense when you remember that the Tokugawa shogunate itself is the time reversal of the American South: the Tokugawas were born out of a long civil war and ended with a foreign invasion (from America) while the American South was born from foreign invasion (of Americans) and ended with a civil war.
The American South is also, interestingly enough, a mirror of Japan in other dimensions as well. The reason why the Tokugawas shut the country's borders for hundreds of years was because they understood that Christian missionaries were a front for a larger invasion force that would pillage the country's resources and abduct people to become slaves in other countries. Of course, the South was buying slaves abducted in other countries in massive quantities.
Going back to the convergent social evolution I mentioned before, you can see some of this in Japan today. Kyoto is notorious for doing exactly the same kind of backhanded compliment bullshit the South loves doing. But even then, that's one part of Japan, that was formerly the capital city. One stop on the Shinkansen takes you to Osaka where people are about as open and outgoing as Americans are.
They simply didn't want another religion. Buddhism was already troublesome enough with a long history of popular uprisings and many monasteries having become as powerful as daimyos. Oda Nobunaga had been mostly tolerant of religions and also of Christians, but he is infamous for bloody curbing their power. The Tokugawa didn't want any of that from happening again, regardless which religion.
There was also a strong motivation to deflate the power of the port cities. They were often in the hands of untrusted daimyos because the Tokugawa prioritized controlling inland regions with farmland and important road connections to keep the economy running and to ensure that troops could be deployed everywhere and kept supplied in case of rebellions.